Triggered Automations (Smartflows)

  Available to administrators with the Administrate Smartflows system permission, site owners and SuperAdmins.

Triggered automations (or Smartflows) are when the saving of one event forms record (trigger form) results in the simultaneous creation of a record for a different event form (target form). They can also be useful in scenarios where users should only see certain fields from an event form, or where they need to enter data related to information collected in a form they don’t have Write access to.

For example, a medical practitioner enters injury details into an event form. They want to share the injury diagnosis and the athlete’s availability to train with the athlete’s coach, but not the entire record. Instead of giving the coach access to the injury details form, a separate event form is created for the coach, with linked calculations to pull in the shareable values from the injury record form. A triggered automation is set up to create a copy of the coach’s shared notes form when an injury details record is saved. This means the medical practitioner doesn’t need to manually share the selected fields with the coach, and the coach only sees the information they’re privy to.

From a data permissions perspective, the coach would only require Linked access to the injury details form to access the linked values, and Read access to the shared notes form to see the linked values.

Managing triggered automations

Within the Automations tool, you can see a list of all triggered automations on your site in the Triggered (Smartflows) tab. You can sort or filter the automations by Name or Description.

To create a triggered automation, select New. To edit an existing automation, search for and select it from the list. Alternatively, hover over the automation to reveal more options and select Edit, Delete or Duplicate. Duplicating the automation will create a new triggered automation with the same configuration as the original, but users will not be included in the duplicate.

Setting up the triggering conditions

When setting up a triggered automation, you need to select which event form will be used as the trigger form - that is, the form that (when saved) triggers the creation of a target record. Any event form can be used as a trigger form, but only one trigger form can be selected per automation.

Triggered automations can be triggered by manual data entry, group data entry or importing data into a record of the trigger form. They can also be triggered by records that have been created by a scheduled automation (Smartsave) and records created as a result of using a Multiple athletes field.

The Delete target record setting can be enabled if the deletion of a trigger record should also result in the deletion of its related target record(s). For example, if the target record is a summary form consisting of linked data from the trigger form, it may not make sense for the target record to exist anymore. If you do not want to delete the target record (e.g. because data has been manually entered into the target record), ensure that this setting is not enabled. 

After selecting the trigger form, you can optionally set conditions that need to be met for the automation to run. The automation can be set up to match all or any conditions. If no conditions are added, a target record will always be created when a trigger form record is saved.

Setting up the target action

After setting up the trigger, you need to select the action. One or multiple event forms can be set as target forms, meaning that a record of these forms will be created each time a record of the trigger form (which matches the triggering conditions, if applicable) is saved.

You can have multiple triggered automations with the same target form, but different triggers. This might be useful if you have a summary form that links data from multiple event forms.

Target records are always created immediately after a record of the trigger form is saved; however, with the Date type setting, they can be future-dated and timestamped. The Date type can be set to Point in time or Period.

• Point in time means that the target record created will be saved relative to the triggering record. By default, an Interval of 0 hours is set, so the target record has the same date and timestamp as the triggering record. If a different interval value is set, the target record will be timestamped at the specified number of hours, days, months, or years after the trigger record is saved. For example, if the Interval is set to 2 hours and the triggering record is saved at 8:00 am, the target record will be created instantaneously but it will be timestamped as 10:00 am on the same date.
  
• Period allows you to specify the day of the week, month or year on which the target record will be saved. For example, you could set the automation to save a target record on the last day of every month. You can customize the timestamp of the target record with the Start and Finish settings.
  • If the triggering record is saved on the same day that the periodic save is scheduled to occur, you can choose to delay the creation of the target record to the following period by ticking Entry on same day is entered next period. For example, if an automation is scheduled to save a target record every Sunday and the triggering record is saved on a Sunday, enabling that setting will create the target record for the following Sunday, not the current Sunday. Note that the automation will only ever create one target record on this date and time, despite the number of trigger records created.
    
    

Linked calculations values

For linked values pulled from event form records that did not trigger the automation, all linked settings (including Group by, Match to, Select value, Date restriction and Ignore if blank) will apply. However, these settings will be ignored for any linked calculations that pull data from the triggering form. Instead, only values from the triggering record itself will be pulled through to the target record. 

For example, a site has two event forms to collect physical testing data: the 20m Sprint Test form and the Vertical Jump Height form. To consolidate the data into one data source, they have a third event form (Fitness Test Summary) that contains linked calculations to pull data from each of the physical testing forms. Furthermore, the linked calculations have been set up to pull the minimum 20m sprint duration value from all 20m Sprint Test records, and the maximum vertical jump height value from all Vertical Jump Height records.

Triggered automations are set up to save a Fitness Test Summary record whenever a physical testing record is created. 

When a 20m Sprint Test record is saved and a resulting Fitness Test Summary record is created, the linked calculations in the summary form will ignore the Select value: Minimum setting and instead pull through the value from the triggering record. The Vertical Jump Height calculation will not be affected and will calculate as configured.

If the target record needs to reference other records for the triggering event form (e.g. to pull the maximum value for the day, rather than the most recent), it may be more appropriate to use a scheduled automation (Smartsave) to create a single target record each day.

Target form templates

Templates are only available in the legacy UI. To access them, follow the prompts within the Automations tool.

To create a template, your account must have a minimum of Read access to the target event form in your role. If you don't have access to the form, you will still be able to create a template, but any data entry selections you add to the template will not be saved.

Some field properties, including Default to last value and Default value, can pre-populate values in a manual entry field, but these settings do not apply to records created by a scheduled automation. If a scheduled automation’s target form contains manual data entry fields, you can instead use a Template to pre-fill these fields when the record is created. 

Templates are specific to an event form. All saved templates are available to anyone with access to the Automations tool.

To create a new template, use the + button, follow the prompts to enter the legacy UI, then tick Use Template. A copy of the event form will be shown; fill out the manual entry fields as required, then click Save new template. When the template is applied to a scheduled automation, the values entered will be populated in every record that is created by that automation.

It is not possible to edit a saved template; instead, you will need to create and save a new template under a different name or delete the existing template. To delete a template, select it from the dropdown menu, then click Delete. If you have not saved the template and want to clear your data selections, select Clear template.

Enterprise configurations

If your AMS site exists on an enterprise server and the appropriate sharing configurations exist, it may be possible to link or copy forms between sites. However, automations cannot be linked or copied between sites. Be aware that creating automations for a linked form and applying them to users who are linked to multiple sites will cause them to trigger on each site that they’re created on. Therefore, if the same automation is configured on multiple sites, it will trigger multiple times.

Steps to set up a triggered automation (Smartflow)

1. Go to the Automations administration tool.
2. Select New.
3. Choose Record created.
4. Provide a Name for the triggered automation. Optionally include a description.
5. Set up the triggering conditions:
   1. Select the trigger form from the dropdown list.
   2. Choose whether to enable the automation for Any account on the site, or Selected accounts. If you select a specific group, the automation will apply to all users within the selected group and its subgroups at the time it is triggered. Individual accounts only need to be selected if they are not part of a selected group or its subgroups.
   3. If a triggering record is deleted, you can enable Delete target event(s) to also delete any of the target records that were generated by it.
   4. If required, add conditions that must be met in the triggering record for the automation to run.
6. Set up the target action:
   1. Select which event form you want the automation to create a record for. 
   2. (Optional) Use a Template to store pre-filled data in the target record.
   3. Set the Date type to determine the date and timestamp of the target record. (Note that target records are always created immediately after the trigger record is saved; this setting only influences the date and timestamp).
      • Select Point in time if the date and timestamp of the target record should be relative to the triggering record. Set a custom Interval to timestamp the target record at a specified number of hours, days, weeks, months or years after the triggering record.
      • Select Period if the date of the target record should be a specific day in a week, month or year (e.g. every Sunday). To delay any automations that occur on the same date to the following period, tick Entry on same day is entered next period.
   4. Tick the Save as draft box if you want the trigger record to be saved as a draft.
7. If multiple target forms are required, configure additional actions for each form.
8. Select Create.